Archive

Quotes

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

—Arthur Miller, 2001

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

—Mario Cuomo, 1985

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917